Big Data – The Strata Review from JISC

Big Data is here, and it changes everything. From startups to the Fortune 500, smart companies are betting on data-driven insight. Strata, a conference organised by O’Reilly was based on three full days of hands-on training, information-rich sessions, and a sponsor pavilion filled with the key players and products. Aimed at bringing together the people, tools, and technologies to make data work the good news is that JISC has written comprehensive report for those who missed it.

The impact that freely available information has had on the learning community is truly profound, with tools like Wikipedia attracting huge audiences (over 365 million readers and growing). We can now access more data than ever – but what do we do with it all? If we want to take full advantage of all this information do we really have the tools we need? And how do we develop these tools in the future?

The internet exerts an unprecedented equalizing force in bringing access to information to everyone on the planet. More information is available (and mainly for free) now than ever before, and yet it is becoming clear that access to information is not enough. The infrastructure to store and share data within sectors is a vital part of the ecosystem, and yet it is often treated as an afterthought. We need a radical change in the way we develop infrastructure in the higher education sector, to ensure that services consumed and funded by the public can do their job as efficiently as possible and at the best possible price.
The research agenda of a university department is closely matched to the skills and goals of the professors and lecturers working in that department. The topics researched in the History department will depend on the specific knowledge and expertise of the History professors at that university. If an external company were to offer to plan their research agenda for them, it would be met with obvious cynicism. And yet the critical tools that these departments rely on are often dismissed as a secondary priority – despite the fact that those very tools define the limits of our ability to explore and learn from the data space that is the foundation of all research…..


You can read the full review (its excellent) over at http://cottagelabs.com/strata-2011-review

Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Threat

At 3:40pm local time in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, an explosion shook the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Four people were reported injured from the initial blast, but broader concerns over increased radiation leakage have lead officials to double the evacuation zone around the plant from 6 to 12 miles. What the ultimate fallout will be is anyone’s guess.
According to Tokyo Electric Power Company, the explosion happened “near” but not in the Unit 1 reactor. Radiation levels had reached 1,000 times above normal in a reactor control room at the plant, and more troublingly levels had reached 8x normal near the main gate.

The important thing, though, is that it appears that the explosion—likely caused by a hydrogen build-up—only affected the wall around the reactor and not steel container housing the reactor itself. The important thing now is that cooling operations continue unhampered. If the cooling systems are inoperative for several hours, the reactor’s water will boil away and the fuel will begin to melt. When that happens, the situation escalates from “manageable” to “Three Mile Island.” And while there are indications that radiation levels have in fact declined since the explosion, Daiichi is still currently walking that line very tightly.

The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are plotted visually and audibly on a world map.

As the video starts out detonations are few and far between. The first three detonations represent the Manhattan Project and the two bombs that ended World War II. After a few representative minutes the USSR and Britain enter the nuclear club and the testing really starts to heat up.

Even though the video does not differentiate between sub-critical “safety” tests and full detonations, you get a good idea of the fever of the nuclear arms race.

see also:

Japan Earthquake Online

Explore events with Localstreamer.com

Localstreamer.com

Localstreamer is a geolocation system that allows you to explore events, data and people’s thoughts in every place on the earth. Integrated with the latest technology to search real time, it can be used to search into the stream information about places, allows you to share or simply read a stream of information about any city on earth. People can also watch videos about the place searched , socialize using comment system or chat. Each day becomes more important the search and collection of local information. All the biggest companies are about to start a fight for the conquest of space in this area. Localstreamer is only a starting point, an experimental service that tries to convey information and to focus local campaigns, events, news made by users for users. Localstreamer offers Free API Access! Developers just need to sign up to get an API key to start working with the system. There is extensive documentation for devs as well. All data is returned in JSON string by default.